Drowning
by Angeli Casi
Summary: A short story about a little girl named Sapphire, read and comment please :


Drowning with Sapphire

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_AN My first story on fanfic, not sure what to say bout it, its not bad but its not one of my better ones, there really is no point to it besides it being a descriptive piece. Its like a short story (which I have little to no experience writing because I prefer long stories) so please read, comment, give me ideas. I got the idea for the story from a dream I had, actually the dream was a little different and more of a nightmare, but I made the story better I think. Any advice or comments? Constructive criticism please. _

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I was walking out in a large country field that led to a quiet campground at the edge of a forest. In the campground there were many trails that led to the sites. I was walking with a little girl. We were heading to the front office. The office was at the other side of the woods and we had quite a ways to go. The ditches were deep and it had just rained so they were full of water. We walked on the road away from the ditch. The young girl I was walking with was about 5 years old. She had brown hair and bright blue eyes and was wearing a light pink dress with flowers on the edge of the hem like they were growing from the dirt near her feet. The green thread of the stem and leaves was bright and it sparkled in the light. It was about mid-day and they sun was still high in the sky. Along with us was a group of other children and another teenager. There were 5 of us total. We walked like we were on an expedition and the young girl with green eyes skipped like there was an invisible hop-scotch drawn out in chalk on the road. The other children were holding the other teenagers hand and they were a little ways behind of the girl and me. We had gotten ahead a while back. We walked to the next turn and then went left along the road. Keeping to the road, when trees began to appear on the right side we made it to another opening, except this one lined the left side of the road and was a vast lake. On the other side of the lake was the office's we were heading to and the only way around not by road was a path through the forest. So the little girl and I took a trail marked with a blue flag. We walked for quite a ways before I realized we had lost sight of the others. I knew they would keep to the path and wouldn't be that far behind us so we continued going.

Along the path there were many things to see, as if it were a nature walk. We walked more and more and the sun was barely visible through the trees. I knew it was getting close to dark. We came across a small stream and a split in the road. One path was dark and led to a forestry route; the other followed the stream which seemed to grow as we went on. We followed the stream to another fork in the road; I assumed it just met up with the one I chose not to follow before so we kept going. By now the girl was getting restless and I pulled her frizzled hair back into a pink ribbon. She smiled and took my hand as we kept going. I carried her on my back for a while and soon we came to an opening. There was a wooden bridge that crossed the stream and continued going straight on the other side and one that kept going straight. They each were lined with lit torches, so even as the light left the sky the path was lit. Beneath the wooden bridge across the stream was a sheet of ice. It covered the water and we walked along that for a while, it was thick and we could see the fish and plants in the water beneath it. Soon enough with the one wooden path on the side and the other wooden path on the other, they each went to the same place, I could see the outline of a hut in the distance, the ice was weakening. So I called to the girl,

"Let's go onto the bridge, we are almost there." She shook her head and suddenly ran forwards eagerly, wanting to stay on the ice. I ran to catch up with her. In a single moment I saw it happen before my eyes, like it was in slow motion, like it took a second for my mind to even register what was happening. It all happened so fast right then.

It was an open pool of water, dark in the bottom and very deep. The paths' went around it and met, forming a rectangle with a pool in the middle. The ice stopped right as the paths' turned to form the rectangle, and the girl, running towards the hut at the other end of the pool, too fast to stop, splashed into the cold dark water; her dress catching on the weeds on the bottom. I ran after her and I could plainly see that she couldn't swim. There was a sign, I briefly glanced at as I jumped in, it plainly said, 'deepest point=15 ft'. I was scared as the cold water suddenly swallowed me whole. I blinked away the tears in my eyes and tried to keep my mouth shut as I desperately needed to breathe. I looked harder and harder, there she was, and I glanced at the pink shady figure in the center of the pool, the deepest point. I dove deeper in the water and then reached for her hands, in just a few seconds I could see that this was not a natural pool, the walls were outline with cement and I could see as lights began to come on in the water. I had to breathe, I shot to the surface and took a deep breath and called out to the people on the edges,

"Please help!" I could already feel myself sinking. I took another breath and dove again. I could see her face turning red, she was holding her breath. I took her hand and pulled, she grabbed hold, her grip icy and hard, she stared into my eyes. I saw bubbles leak from her mouth, she couldn't hold on much longer, I took her in my arms and put my mouth to hers allowing the little air I had in my mouth to travel into hers. I yanked at the seaweed tangled around her ankles. It broke free in my grip. Suddenly a wave of air bubbles fogged my vision. "No." I tried to speak. Water just flooded into my mouth. I pulled her hand and I swam at the water, trying desperately to pull us both up. I pushed her ahead of me and I pushed her towards the surface. Her hand was still gripping mine, I peeled her fingers away from mine and I kicked with my feet against the water, I pushed her ahead of me and she was heavy in my hands. She wasn't moving. Her hair came undone from the ribbon and it fell into the dark water, slowly drifting to the bottom. Still moving her, I urged her past the last few feet to the surface, she turned and I could see her eyes, wide and bloodshot. They were blue like the water and like the sky on a sunny day. I could see tears fall from her eyes, even in the water I could see them, and then I realized I saw large hands pulling her out. She was safe.

I saw them pull her onto the dock, and I saw them perform CPR, and I saw her coughing up the water. I saw her cry out my name, but I couldn't hear it. I was falling, towards the pink ribbon that matched her dress, at the bottom of the pool. I didn't have strength to swim back up. I didn't have the breath to keep breathing. My lungs slowly filling with water, I was little by little drowning to death. The water was ice cold and I felt numb, feeling no warmth, no coldness except the dark water, nothing. A bolt of fire suddenly shot threw me and I realized the others had made it. It was the other teenager I was with, I couldn't remember her name, she must have dove in to help me save the girl as I got her to the surface. And now she was trying to save me. Her hands felt like fire on my body, her touch pulling me up, urging me to survive. I told her,

"No, save yourself. Protect the little kids." But I wasn't speaking at all, in my mind I was screaming, but I couldn't move, I couldn't speak aloud. I was completely immobile. I was numb. Her hands were still warm and they felt like a fire to my body. The flames seemed to push me to the surface. She was a good swimmer. I felt them pull me to the dock and I felt those warm hands pushing on my chest. My chest hurt so badly and I strained to breath, but no air would come into me. I felt the warm, small, hands of the children, I heard them crying, they didn't understand. I wanted to wrap my arms around them and explain, say it was going to be alright, and at the same time I wanted someone to wrap me in their warm, fiery, arms and tell _me_ everything was okay. But as I felt those warm hands on my cold lifeless body, I knew that wasn't going to happen because it wasn't going to be okay. I was dying and they couldn't save me.

I realized that I also felt one cold hand, a touch different from the others, as numb as me, and it was the girl with green eyes, with her soaking wet pink dress, with her hair tangled because the ribbon was at the bottom of the pool. She took my hand and I remembered her eyes in the water. I saw them flash before me. I remembered the sky, the water, and the blue house down the road. I remembered the other colors too, the reds of the flowers in the fields, the orange light of the sun; I longed for it's warmth one more time, the yellow of the wheat growing in the farmers fields, the green of the grass and the trees, the blue, not of the water or the sky, but of the young girls eyes. I remembered the purple of my mother's flowerbed and the black, the swirled black of the water. Most of all I remembered the warmth in each color, each image warming me from the coldness, as the black shadows fought to claim me.

I saw it all in that second and my vision returned to the dark, the hot hands on my arms, the loud cries of the children, the hard pressure on my chest, the warmness returning to my mouth in attempt to give me breath, oh how I wanted to take that breath, but I had gave it to the girl. I gave it to the girl with warm blue eyes, the girl with the pink dress with flowers that grew from the bottom, the girl whose ice cold hand was in mine, and the only girl who was not speaking. She squeezed my hand in between hers and I could hear her whispering, she thanked me quietly, her breath was still cold on my skin. And then she kissed my cheek as the teenager kept pushing on my chest. She was still whispering as she moved away, she was praying. She was praying for me. A man from the office came and put a fluffy green towel around her shoulders, I wanted to say, "No, give her a blue one." but I didn't. Another woman came and took the other children away, she was taking them away so they didn't have to see, I understood now. But the girl wrapped up in the fluffy green towel, her dripping chestnut brown hair on her shoulders, the girl was staying. She told the woman, "No, Please." The woman seemed to understand and nodded. A single tear fell down her cheek and she squeezed my hand one more time. The man gently put his hand on the teenagers shoulder and his rough voice said,

"It's too late." The teenager in tears, and loudly sobbing tried to continue but his gentle prodding made her stop and he pulled her away. She buried her face in his chest and cried relentlessly. I don't know why, I would like to thank her for trying to bring me back, but it was my time, and we were never that close. The hard pressure on my chest stopped but it still burned from the hot touch and the cold water. The little girl stayed beside me while the man and the teenager stood, I could see them not that far off, and the girl knelt beside me and spoke, her voice was like an angel, a tear slipped down her other cheek, She didn't say she was sorry for running, I knew that, she spoke like only a child can,

"Don't stay for me, follow the angels, let them guide you to heaven, they told me they were coming for you. It's okay." She hugged me and then sat up her face no longer wet from tears. I looked into her deep icy blue eyes, Sapphire; that was her name, like her eyes, Sapphires. She didn't cry again, she took my hand and whispered one last thing in my ear,

"Tell my mommy I am coming home soon." Then the girl took my hands in hers and folded them across my chest. She held them for another moment and then she reached forward and I felt her hands, cold from the water, but with a warmth I was joyful to feel, the warmth of life. Her tiny hands reached forward and touched my face; I was still staring into her eyes as she closed my eyelids. Darkness fell on me, my chest no longer hurt; I was no longer cold and numb, more of a tingly feeling. It didn't hurt, it wasn't cold. I couldn't feel their touch on my skin. I took a deep breath. For a moment I froze. I took a_ breath_. I looked around, and I called out,

"Hello?" I saw a light, not far off, and I walked towards it, when I was nearly there, a woman appeared, she glowed beautifully. She was an angel, I somehow knew, with long golden hair and her eyes, like sapphires. She held out her hand and smiled. Her voice was like music and I closed my eyes for one last moment, remembering the little girl in the pink dress, with sapphire eyes and long brown hair. I felt something in my hand and looked down to see the ribbon. The pink ribbon that had fallen to the bottom of the pool, the ribbon I had unconsciously grabbed as the teenager was pulling me up. I looked into the angels eyes; they were filled with kindness, life, and warmth. I was almost startled to hear my voice speak as I reached out and took her hand, allowing her to lead me down the shimmering road ahead of us,

"Yes, I am ready."

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thanks for reading, please comment!!!


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